The Unsettling Reality of Settling Refugees: A Conversation with Philosopher Jen Kling

Nonviolence Radio

On this episode of Nonviolence Radio philosophy professor, Jen Kling (University of Colorado at Colorado Springs), talks with Michael and Stephanie about refugees and the complex issue of resettling and caring for those who have had to leave their homes. Ensuring that people fleeing hardship at home can find a safe place to live, genuine opportunities to engage in school and meaningful work, to integrate and flourish in a new place is fraught with tensions, tensions which are often overlooked, avoided or simply ignored. Jen encourages us all to look closely at the problem and to deal with it, however imperfectly, head on:

… it’s insufficient to just say, “Okay, we're just going to resettle folks,” right? And there are a number of different ways to resettle folks. Once folks are resettled or in the process, you also then have to be making sure that they have access to justice. That’s such a philosopher thing to say, but I think it’s true. And having access to justice is having somebody check up. Ii is understanding your rights, responsibilities, obligations, and opportunities; that there’s someone you can go to, that this is the kind of thing that shouldn’t be happening to you. And I think that’s why it’s so important to work through the details, to say, What does justice demand of us in this case? Because I think it actually demands a lot more than we would like to believe. I think it does. We owe it to folks, not as a matter of compassion or as a matter of mercy, but as a matter of justice because they're people too, you know, and we owe it to them.

All of us in the global community have a responsibility to step up to the big work of taking care of each other, especially those who, like refugees, are vulnerable and without recourse to the rights and support they deserve. This is not a small endeavor, but it is an important one and a necessary one. In Jen’s words, “Sometimes we are responsible for fixing things we did not break.”